Feingold slams Obama for losing public option

Raw Story
December 21, 2009

The White House on Sunday urged lawmakers to pass contentious health care reform, saying that the watered-down version of a bill before the Senate still accomplishes the president’s goals of changing the troubled system.

The president’s push was not welcomed by all members of his party, with a lead Senate progressive taking point on hammering Obama over the loss of the public option.

A d v e r t i s e m e n t

“I’ve been fighting all year for a strong public option to compete with the insurance industry and bring health care spending down,” Senator Russ Feingold said in a prepared statement. “I continued that fight during recent negotiations, and I refused to sign onto a deal to drop the public option from the Senate bill. Unfortunately, the lack of support from the administration made keeping the public option in the bill an uphill struggle. Removing the public option from the Senate bill is the wrong move, and eliminates $25 billion in savings. I will be urging members of the House and Senate who draft the final bill to make sure this essential provision is included.

“But while the loss of the public option is a bitter pill to swallow, on balance, the bill still delivers meaningful reform, and the cost of inaction is simply too high. This bill significantly expands coverage and helps protect Wisconsinites from high costs and insurance company abuses, such as denying or restricting coverage based on pre-existing conditions. The bill also improves a flawed Medicare formula that denies Wisconsin fair reimbursement rates, encourages the kind of low-cost, high-value care practiced in our state, increases access to home and community-based long-term care, and reduces federal budget deficits by $132 billion over the next decade.”

Facing opposition from key lawmakers last week, the Senate version of the bill stripped any reference to a “public option” that would have expanded government-run health care for the poor, and then added restrictions on public funding for abortion in order to assuage conservatives.

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